Posted by Neil at term4-216-231-033-126.speakeasy.net on August 17, 2001 at 03:01:49:
In Reply to: It has happened before...But I have questions... posted by FearofSpam on August 17, 2001 at 00:32:22:
: : CLERKS was shot in 16mm, which has the same aspect ratio as your TV screen. There's no panning and scanning at all.
: I was not aware that 16mm had the same aspect ratio as TV...
It does, actually standard 35mm does, too, but we'll come back to that later.
: I have never had the oppurtunity to see CLERKS on the big screen. So I have no frame of reference here.
It was blown up to 35mm and matted to 1.85:1 for most, if not all, theatrical screenings, and that's the version that is included on the original LaserDisc, which is the source for the current DVD.
: I think I remember reading that CLERKS got bumped up to 35mm for theatrical release. How does that work? Does something get cut from the upper and lower third? Or is it just stretched to fit or what? And is the Letterbox version of CLERKS taken from the 35mm print if I remembered the first part correctly?
The full image on a standard 35mm negative is approximately 1.33:1 (I think it's actually 1.37:1, but that's another story). The widescreen effect is created by matting down the film at the top and bottom (the vast majority of "mistakes" people spot such as boom mikes, etc. at the top or bottom of the frame are do to poor matting by the projectionist rather than anything the director did wrong) and projecting the wider image onto the screen.
As such, when most movies are fitted to 1.33:1 image for television display, they use a combination of opening the mattes and panning & scanning. The pan & scan will be necessary in the case of most 2.35:1 movies as well as anytime there is a visual effects shot or a something in the top or bottom of the frame such as the boom mike issue referred to above.
People often think that as long as they simply open the mattes and we are just getting "more" image that this makes it ok, when that's not entirely true. It does avoid the jarringly bad pans and fake zooms of pan & scan, it still isn't the framing the director, who was making a movie to be displayed in motion picture theaters, intended. The aesthetics - and often the way the dramatic action is placed - is designed to work with the picture looking a certain way, in most cases 1.85 times as wide as it is high.
The point of letterboxing is to preserve the aspect ratio that the film was intended to be displayed at, more image, less image or whatever. This has been easily confused because the easiest examples for demonstration of bad re-framing are from 2.35:1 movies that get nearly half the picture taken away from them.
In the case of CLERKS, I believe Kevin has gone on record as saying that they were indeed paying attention to the 1.85:1 framing, and I like the framing at that ratio quite well. I know that Vincent has said that the fullscreen version was printed off a straight 16mm print and looked much cleaner. I haven't seen it recently enough to make the comparison.
Well, I'll let someone else deal with the issues surrounding Super 35, anamorphic images and 70mm, as well as correct any mistatements I may have made.